President Donald Trump led the prosecution, telling Fox Business on Thursday that Harris was “the most liberal person in the U.S. Senate.”
Facts first: Harris’ voting record in the Senate is certainly one of the most liberal, although her record prior to the Senate is more moderate on some issues.
After six years as California’s attorney general, Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016. Since then, she has co-sponsored several liberal causes, including extending gun control measures and passing on “Medicare for All.” Harris has also voted against many of Trump’s nominees for federal justice rallies and top positions within his administration.
In 2019, GovTrack, a non-partisan organization that follows bills in Congress, named Harris as’ the ‘most liberal compared to all senators.’ One measure the organization uses is to compare how many two-party tickets each senator co-sponsors have with how many tickets they sponsor in total. Harris had the lowest at 15% in 2019.
During her primary run, Harris eventually disagreed with Vermont. Bernie Sanders on the question of whether private health insurance should play a role in Medicare for All, a bill that Harris originally co-sponsored. At a January 2019 town hall meeting, Harris was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if she supported eliminating private insurance. The senator responded in the affirmative, saying she would be OK if insurers cut out of the mix. When Harris released her Medicare for All plan months later in July, it stopped short of completely eliminating private insurance.
While Trump said “in the U.S. Senate,” some who argue against the narrative imposed by Trump and others point to Harris’ record as California’s attorney general, what the GovTrack founder says “is in conflict. “with her time in the Senate.
Harris has been criticized for some of her actions as attorney general, particularly regarding the reform of criminal justice, which some see as contradictory to freer ideals. For example, during the primary, her other candidates pushed her to defend policies that were introduced while she was AG, such as a hardline stance on marijuana, which disproportionately affected communities of color.
Since becoming a senator, Harris has changed her stance on marijuana in particular. In 2019, when announcing a bill to decriminalize marijuana possession at the federal level, Harris said, “Times have changed – marijuana should not be a crime.”
“Our analysis is consistent with her documented career for Congress to be pragmatic or moderate,” Josh Tauberer, founder of GovTrack told the Sacramento Bee, “and it remains to be seen what part of her career – her actions as a district attorney” and Attorney General as their policy proposals in Congress – would be greater reflected in a Biden administration. “
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